computers

The ZWO ASIair is a smart WiFi device that allows you to control ASI astronomy cameras for astrophotography. This Raspberry Pi-based accessory allows you to run an imaging sequence, autoguide, and even plate solve using your smartphone or tablet. As many of you know, when it comes to capturing astrophotography images, I tend to do things “the hard way” more often than I should. This includes everything from a manual 3-star alignment to carrying my astrophotography gear in and out of the garage night after night. It’s because I’m old-school. When I started deep-sky astrophotogr…

The Pegasus Astro Pocket Powerbox is an ingenious device that allows you to streamline your deep sky astrophotography setup. The goal of this little blue box is to replace your current mess of power cables running to various devices on your telescope with a single, lightweight power source. The Pocket Powerbox includes (4) 12V outlets that I use to send power to the various devices riding along with my telescope. This includes everything from my dew heater band to my dedicated astronomy camera. The device came with all of the cables I needed in the box, which was a pleasant surprise.…

The past 48 hours have been a whirlwind of software downloads, driver updates and even a last minute run to the computer store (for a new USB to RS232 cable) I am happy to report that the journey was one of the best decisions I’ve made in a long time to advance my progress in this incurable addiction we call deep sky astrophotography. As I write this - my camera is recording impressive unguided 2-minute images of the North America Nebula using the new PC. NGC 7000 - 26 Minutes of Exposure Time (13 x 2 minutes) The new computer has inspired me to bring my old equatorial mount out of…